Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET: A Developer's Guide to SEO

Chapter 4. Content Relocation and HTTP Status Codes

One of the perks of ASP.NET is that it abstracts away many low-level implementation details from the web developer. It does such a great job, in fact, that one can typically build complex web applications without understanding much at all about the protocol web servers use to speak to the world, HTTP (HyperText Transport Protocol).

Though most of the time this ignorance is bliss, it is sometimes not so with regard to search engine optimization. Using the protocol improperly has the potential to wreak havoc for search engine rankings. On the other hand, knowing how to use it effectively can be of great help to the very same end.

HTTP status codes are a small but critical part of this protocol. They provide information regarding the state of an HTTP request. One may use them, for example, to indicate that the requested information should be retrieved from a different location henceforth. In modern search engines, doing so also may result in a transference of link equity to that new location. This example alone highlights the importance of knowing how to use these codes.

In this chapter you:

• Learn about the HTTP status codes that are pertinent to the search engine marketer.

• Understand how to use the redirection status codes properly, how to signal deleted pages, and how to avoid indexing errors.

• Learn how to implement redirection using ASP.NET, ISAPI_Rewrite, and UrlRewriter.NET.

• Follow step-by-step exercises to implement automatic URL correction ...